The present invention relates to the transmission of digital signals and faces the problem of transferring a digital stream by subdividing it into a plurality of streams at lower bit rate (hereinafter referred to as derived streams) transmitted in parallel over respective transmission links each exhibiting a respective pass band lower than that of the overall stream to be transmitted.
This subdivision of a stream into lower bit-rate streams transmitted in parallel is known in the art as xe2x80x9cinverse multiplexingxe2x80x9d.
A solution of this type is applicable, for instance, to the transmission of a digital video signal (of a band typically ranging from 3 to 13 Mbit/s) over a number (usually between 2 and 8) of transmission links at 2 Mbit/s. It is however understood that the scope of the invention is not limited to this specific example of application.
Since the individual streams propagate along a transmission network, they generally undergo different delays. At the reception side the need then arises of bundling them again so as to correctly restore the original digital stream.
The present invention aims at solving this problem in a particularly simple way, without requiring the usexe2x80x94in particular at the level of the end interfaces of the linksxe2x80x94of complex and expensive system architectures.
According to the present invention, this aim is achieved by virtue of a method having the characteristics specifically mentioned in the following claims. The invention also concerns a device for implementing the method.